Painting with Intention

"Rising Cloud, Harrison Lake" 18 X 24" Oil on Canvas

Chromatically, this newest piece demonstrates the versatility of my 3 colour system. Yup, the same 3 colours as before!

But there is lots going on in this one with composition, and I finally was able to scratch an itch on a tight and structured layout without getting too uptight about it. I shot the photo from a kayak, on the backside of a little island out in Harrison Lake. I saw the painting before I hit the shutter.

I wanted to convey the exhilaration, joy and awe I felt in the face of this. The gate of heaven is everywhere, as Thomas Merton said, and at times like this, I think it swings ajar a bit. I have always considered the act of painting to be an act of worship. This time, it felt like High Mass.

So obviously, I needed to summon just about every tool at my disposal to project this to the viewer. Here is some of what I did intentionally, using some very strong hints from Nature.

So I basically started of with the time-tested grid of thirds, and the center stabilising pyramid. Guys have been using this since at least the Renaissance. So nothing new there. I wanted to lay a strong foundation.

You all know that Cezanne rocks my cage, and that I have been wanting to get at his knack for structure a little more closely, so this was the perfect excuse to establish a strong grid of repeating diagonals, creating rhythm, unity and a lively internal dynamic. painting and music have a lot in common, and I am not the first one to think so! I really did not have to manipulate the image very much to do achieve this.

Movement is really important here, too, because the cloud is rising off the mountain. But I wanted the painting to ascend in every aspect. The verticality of the trees emphasizes that of course, but they are static. Again, nothing new here, but I do not always get to apply all I know. Notably, this technique was used by van Gogh in his later stuff, and from him, Emily Carr, but I wanted to use more subtly, rather than it being the dominating thing.

Kinda like boiling water, this internal movement.

In fact, I tried to instinctively create some upward compression with curved lines in this piece too. The top and bottom of the "boiler", as it were.


I have also been interested in the way, in photos at least, the sky-colour seems to bleed into edges of things--especially shadow areas in tree tops. For this painting, I drew the trees in as usual, but then painted the sky-colour in further than I normally would, past where I wanted the masses of the trees. Then I used pure Manganese blue, straight out of the tube to paint over the dried sky-colour on the shadow sides. This blue is translucent in its unmixed form, so I effectively created a glaze in the shadow areas of the trees where they meet the sky. It worked well, I think. Although I wouldn't mind not being so freakin' versatile and clever in deference to developing an homogeneous style, it is good to impress myself one in a while with these little innovations :) I am very interested to continue these explorations in perception. I really feel like I am getting some work done then. Visual research, yeah.

But the biggest buzz of this piece for me was that I was totally in the zone for almost the entire thing. I really, really enjoyed seeing this one come off the brush. Yes, sometimes I forgot to eat--and sleep!